Goodbye Xara

[vkenner]

I just read through G.W. Priester's - as usual - very well written and freshly (with Xara DesignerX365's options) designed First Look.

It confirmes my expactation that Xara (aka Magix) is on a route towards a "painting by numbers" application.

I quote from Garry's First Look:
Users who cannot draw a straight line even with the Straight Line Tool will appreciate the wealth of art, symbol library, configurable SmartShapes and SmartCharts, free high quality stock photos, design and website templates and professionally designed entire websites that you can customize and modify to your heart’s content.

There is hardly any development with vector tools at all. I do appreciate the development with text and the spiral SmartShape. But this is not enough.

On top of that I am not convinced of Xara's 365 concept. To me it seems to be just another subscription model. Eeven more complicated.

I moved from Corel to Xara in 2005. Now I shall move on to Serif's Affinity Designer, which is in Beta right now. (And I certainly will use Xara Designer Pro 11, too).

I certainly appreciate all the work Xara has put into the program. But for me it has taken a direction away from my interests.

All the best,

v.

[Acorn]

Sorry to see your first Post is an adieu (better than goodbye, which is more final).

Keep using XDPX11, I am sure it will be a faithful workhorse for you.

Acorn

[gwpriester]

Hello and Goodbye. To clarify I was trying to point out that Xara was as good for design professionals, I modestly consider myself in that camp, and for non designers. I found a lot to like as always. But I would advise you try out the free trial before you finalize your goodbye.

[vkenner]

Hello and Goodbye.

I admit my one post only is not very polite. I was following this forum for several years and learned a lot from many of you. I want to thank you all for that.

Garry your review is very informativ as always. My intention is not to comment on your writing at all. I just found your conclusion worth citing because that is exactly what sums up Xara's way ahead. This is fine but not what I am looking for.

v.

[handrawn]

you will still need xdp11 there are quite a few things it has that affinity currently lacks; if you want more vector tools you should probably be going to illustrator, affinity's big plus for me in the pixel persona.. not of course vector - there are a couple of great vector features that make affinity a welcome addition, but it's not a replacement, just an addition...

btw, as one brought up with windsor and newton, higgins, brause, stratford and waterford, all digital painting is 'done by numbers'....

[vkenner]

you will still need xdp11 there are quite a few things it has that affinity currently lacks; if you want more vector tools you should probably be going to illustrator, affinity's big plus for me in the pixel persona.. not of course vector -

I am aware of the fact that Affinity is currently not complete. And I assume for certain things I will use my XDP11 because in many ways it is still a good tool. I do own Illustrator CS6 but never got very well around it.

What motivates me to support Affinity/Serif is their policy of open communication and the promise not to turn the software into a subscription model at some point. As I stated before the new 365-licence is one major reason not to support Xara for now.

v.

[RichardPM]

I too am saying Goodbye to Xara after a good many years of buying their bi annual interface upgrades.
The final kicker for me is that despite an extensive description, complete with examples, pictures and pdfs, Xara "product support" has done nothing to fix a very annoying problem in the Print control when using some Brother printers. I was made to feel that it was my fault or even my unpaid job to do all the debugging for them, even though each time I sent some details in, replies indicated it was more or less ignored.
I tried pretty much the same thing in Affinity and lo and behold, no problems.

I also asked why it was impossible to have default setting saved as global options rather than on a page by page basis, to be told "that is the way it is"!. Had they actually pretended they were listening and even say, offered a nominal discount on next 'upgrade' for the many hours of my time spent explaining this vexing issue, it would have been much much better customer support.
I saw that about a year or so ago they were advertising for programmers so assumed this was to do a careful rebuild of the programme and fix up a number of other very longstanding glaring errors, omissions and oversights. There is so much that could be simply done to further develop, improve and make this programme a real winner, but instead, they are just milking it.

I am also happy to say that Affinity is cheaper than a Xara upgrade and does all I really need. I anticipate that they might be more responsive to user comments, too.

[pauland]

Ouch.

What was the "very annoying problem" and why have you never mentioned it on this forum?

If you have/had an opinion on the software, or a problem to be solved, this is the place to air it.

[handrawn]

ok... after Mr Nice Guy, here comes Mr Pragmatic:

I too am saying Goodbye to Xara after a good many years of buying their bi annual interface upgrades.

entirely your choice - good luck

The final kicker for me is that despite an extensive description, complete with examples, pictures and pdfs, Xara "product support" has done nothing to fix a very annoying problem in the Print control when using some Brother printers. I was made to feel that it was my fault or even my unpaid job to do all the debugging for them, even though each time I sent some details in, replies indicated it was more or less ignored.
I tried pretty much the same thing in Affinity and lo and behold, no problems.

you know, sometimes there are just incompatibilities with certain configurations/prgrams/devices... nothing works with everything in exatly the way everyone wants, it's a fact of life.. it's not the job of support to make the program work in every conceivable way possible, just to support in the way it does work as far as is possible and log bugs for the development team - and the root cause may be nothing to do with the xara program regardles of what else works or does not

I also asked why it was impossible to have default setting saved as global options rather than on a page by page basis, to be told "that is the way it is"!. Had they actually pretended they were listening and even say, offered a nominal discount on next 'upgrade' for the many hours of my time spent explaining this vexing issue, it would have been much much better customer support.

I do hope you realise how that sounds

I saw that about a year or so ago they were advertising for programmers so assumed this was to do a careful rebuild of the programme and fix up a number of other very longstanding glaring errors, omissions and oversights. There is so much that could be simply done to further develop, improve and make this programme a real winner, but instead, they are just milking it.

I am sure they are doing the best they can with the resources they have, which are limited

I am also happy to say that Affinity is cheaper than a Xara upgrade and does all I really need

a good reason for moving then

I anticipate that they might be more responsive to user comments, too.

good luck with that too

[Grenou]

Ouch ouch, that hurts.

I don't understand why your first post is of such a negative nature.
Everyone here bends over backwards/forewards to be helpful, so there is no reason to make the statement you did, which just makes people feel bad.

Xara rules in my book, silly licence or not :-)

Grenou